In case we weren’t sure porn had gone mainstream–here’s NBC’s “Playboy Club” for fall TV! BOYCOTT TIME!!!

Posted on August 31, 2011 by elizabeth

“‘The Playboy Club,’ set in the first Playboy Club in Chicago, debuts this September as the centerpiece of NBC’s new fall television season.”

My guess is that NBC is trying to grab some Mad Men market share. But instead they’re trying to pitch “Playboy Club” as….empowering women. Ummmmm. OK.

One of the leading actresses ‘praised the Playboy Bunnies as pioneers of women’s lib‘ saying:

“They wanted their own fortune and went out into the work force doing what they wanted to do. I could not be more empowered by that example…”

Just to clarify, THIS is the new face of female empowerment: the “pioneers of women’s lib”:

And NBC execs couldn’t agree more (surprise!):

NBC entertainment chairman Robert Greenblatt called the show a “really fun soap opera,” while executive producer Chad Hodge told TV reporters that the program was “all about empowering these women to be whatever they want to be.“

Oh! I get it! Pornography is just a “really fun soap opera!” And being a Playboy Bunny is REALLLLY all about female empowerment! How did I not know this?

And why do I feel like whacking my head against the wall right now?

In fact, I got so angry today because there’s a bus-stop ad for “Playboy Club” RIGHT ACROSS my twins’ preschool. As if that’s not bad enough, this bus-stop is crowded everyday with middle-schoolers waiting for their ride home.

And they say pornography doesn’t target children! (Many, many people who struggle with porn addiction were exposed to it as children).

Gloria Steinem doesn’t think it’s about female empowerment:

“Clearly ‘The Playboy Club’ is not going to be accurate. It was the tackiest place on earth. It was not glamorous at all… it normalizes a passive dominant idea of gender. So it normalizes prostitution and male dominance…”

I say it’s time we mothers stood up and said ENOUGH! I’m boycotting “Playboy Club” and I urge you to do the same. Please help me CLOSE THE CLUB ON NBC by pledging to help remove pornography from network television.

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  • http://emiliasadventures.blogspot.com Emilia Jane

    Just curious, have you read what the show is actually about? Do you know the original set up of the club? It’s kind of some cool history, honestly fascinating. How can you say this is worse than Desperate Housewives or a million other shows already on network tv?

    • http://www.elizabethesther.com elizabeth

      Yes, I have read what the show is “actually” about. And I find it tragic that young women think what Hugh Hefner has done is “cool history” or “honestly fascinating.” That really breaks my heart.

  • Becca

    I sort of worry that making a big fuss about it will actually help the show in the long run? Because more people will hear about it and check it out? I literally hadn’t even heard of it until this post, and I keep up with television news. I could be wrong, though.

    What people should really do is make sure to watch Castle, which shares its time slot, to make its ratings look even WORSE in comparison. (Not that I’m saying that because it’s my favorite show or anything… :P )

    • KatR

      I can’t be sure, but I’d bet that the marketing department at NBC is hoping and praying for negative attention. I can’t think of one show I watch on NBC, and I hadn’t heard of the show either until I heard that Gloria Steinem was calling for a boycott.

    • http://blog.amberlbaker.com Amber-Lee

      Nathan Fillion FTW! That’s really what everyone needs to be doing – studying Sci-Fi and Fantasy. It’s where theology went after Paradise Lost.

  • KatR

    This looks like an utterly crappy show about a club that was popular in the 70′s that won’t make it past two episodes. I’d love to see a boycott against “The Bachelor”, a show that has been on forever where a guy in real life feels up multiple women until he decides which one he will break up with several months later.

    • Tara S

      Oh ick! Let’s boycott all the reality shows, except Canada’s Worst Handyman. That’s a good show. :-)

  • http://blog.amberlbaker.com Amber-Lee

    Can we just agree to ban most every reality tv show? The only good ones are Top Shot and anything Gordon Ramsey does.
    ::wants to marry Ramsey::

  • http://countryblossom.blogspot.com Katy~TheCountryBlossom

    So sad. :( TV just gets worse and worse. We got rid of our TV programming and are so, so glad we did! I can’t believe how much people get into The Bachelor and Desperate housewives and all those shows. I have never watched them and don’t feel like I have missed out on anything.

  • http://www.rareroses.com/ Azure

    I agree with the above commenter that we should all watch CASTLE as a form of protest. Ha ha! Losing its time slot is much worse than “losing” people who weren’t going to watch it anyway (readers of this blog).

  • http://ainesahm.blogspot.com Canadian Anne

    I so agree with you, EE. I just about fell off the sofa and spat out my coffee when I first saw the ads for this pornography disguised as a soap opera, wrapped in a slick primetime slot TV show.
    Since when is female “empowerment” about letting yourself become an object to be lusted over and used? There is nothing empowering about that, unless of course you consider the empowerment it makes me feel to take a hacksaw to the television…but I digress…
    This is a HORRID example of a show, to be putting on in a primetime TV slot no less. How, in the name of all that is holy, is this an example to men or women of how we are to treat, and regard, the other sex? How is this a “great leap forward” for men or women? It is simply a show about manipulation, shallowness, deceitfulness, and the depths of human depravity….
    “Empowering,” my foot…

  • http://www.rareroses.com/ Azure

    BTW, my sister-in-law worked at a Playboy night club as a bunny back in the day. She’s Asian American. How much do you want to bet that there will be little or no diversity on the show? That bothers me *much* more than yet another show about Hugh Hefner’s empire.

    • http://www.shackbible.com ShackBibleGuy

      I’m sure the show will be diverse. Some of the Barbie lookalikes will be 19. Others will be 19 and a half.

  • Janet

    I applaud your speaking-out against pornography. I am probably much older than the women who read this blog, and I remember Hugh Hefner’s sick “empire” and how long it took us women to get past that Playboy bunny image as the perfect female. Some readers of your blog may see the early feminist movement, after the suffrogettes (1970-ish or so) as going against Christian values – and in some cases they did – but for the most part, they made an enormous contribution to the welfare of women – and they viewed the Playboy empire and their view of women as a major example of a mentality about women which they wanted to change.
    Myself included.

    • http://www.downtoearthwomen.blogspot.com Tracey

      I really don’t know if credit can be wholly taken by “feminists”
      and I put that in quotes not because I think it’s a bad word, but because it is a group of women that seperates themselves from “other” women and takes credit for things that I really don’t think “they” deserve.

      In fact, I equate feminisim much like evolution. It’s always been around, it’s not a new idea at all, (meaning in the last couple of centuries or so) but Gloria Steinem and Darwin were among the first, if not the first, to give the ideas a name and write books about them.

      Women throughout history, especially young women, have always been movers and shakers behind movements regarding clothes and styles, societal changes, etc. In fact, I think a lot of credit for pioneering new frontiers, ideas, inventions, belong to women and that women deserve much more credit for all that than they get. However, until the 60′s perhaps more women were just of a mindset that it didn’t matter if they got credit as much as it mattered that things changed. I really think the feminist movement, per se, has more to do with who gets credit, than any real reform.

  • Renee

    Ditto on all you said, EE. It is absolutely disusting; and yes, pornography usually hooks people in at young ages. It is rampant in our culture today, with as high as 80-90% of men having an issue (some level of addiction) with it. I will not waste my time watching that B.S. tv show. Pornography is an absolute lie. The Truth about wonderful, delightful, REAL sexuality can be found in Song of Solomon! :-)

  • KylaJean

    I think the founding mothers of feminisim would be rolling over in their graves. The Playboy franchise has done nothing to empower women to do anything new. The right to vote, divorce an abusive husband and to demand equal pay has empowered woment. All throughout time women have had the right to use their sexuality to have power over men or circumstances. Prostitution is the oldest job around. Feminisim is the right to power without using sex or your body. Sounds to me that those involved with this show are trying to redeem themselves for becoming involved with such fluff.

    I have to wonder what we are teaching a generation of women when we send the message that sexiness=power, Lord help us!

    • http://www.downtoearthwomen.blogspot.com Tracey

      Don’t forget women owning property. When my great grandmother homesteaded in north central Montana, she was one of the few women homesteaders to do so, because Montana allowed single women to own land…..until they were married. Then, the land belonged to her husband unless he gave permission for her to keep it….which is what my great grandfather had to do when they married.

      Anyway, I DON”T think feminisim is the right to power without using sex. I think PLENTY of women still use sex and sexuality to get what they want…and I don’t necessarily have an issue with that…if men are going to be that dang dumb. I think feminisim is about having power without any moral consequences or having to think about how it may affect others. It IS no question, a double edged sword.

  • http://www.downtoearthwomen.blogspot.com Tracey

    I got rid of cable TV a long time ago. I hate the commercials, I hate how it sucks up my time, I despise the messages it sends and then it makes me PAY for it!!! The whole idea of paid cable was to get rid of commercials, but now if you want commercial free TV, you have to pay extra for it, and it’s crap too.

    I thought I would really miss the 24/7 news channels, but I get plenty of that on-line.

    So, we pay for Netflix and watch that when we want T.V. or check out a movie from the library. We really do not miss cable at all.

  • Cara

    Ugh. I completely agree with KylaJean. It drives me crazy when people say that stripping or posing nude or doing pornography is “empowering” to women because “Hey, these women can do whatever they want!” Look at the numbers of women from middle to upper class, non-abusive households who were given opportunities in those fields (very few) to see that’s a lie. It’s not empowering – it’s just another way that men use women who have few or no other opportunities.

    Real empowerment is about being able to use your brain to live a dignified, stable life. The pioneers of women’s lib weren’t Playboy bunnies, they were women like my grandmother, who was an officer in the Army in the 1940s and went out into the workforce in the 1950s because she didn’t want to stay home. Or my mom who got a PhD in the early 1970s and became a tenured professor in a male-dominated business field. Those are the women who made it possible for me to think it was completely normal to go to college, or get a graduate degree and do whatever I wanted and worked for. And you know what? Being a Playboy Bunny didn’t make that list.

    • http://www.downtoearthwomen.blogspot.com Tracey

      Exactly.

  • http://www.shackbible.com ShackBibleGuy

    I hope people will see through this charade of pimp-feminism, but even if they don’t, my sons will grow up knowing how to respect women. This may be one of those ways we are going to be “strange people in a strange land” for awhile.

  • http://faithandfood.morizot.net/ Scott Morizot

    Gloria Steinem went undercover as a Playboy bunny in the early 70s for an investigative report. (I believe they made a movie about that in the 80s.) Part of what she wrote was that even with strict ‘no contact’ policies and no nudity, it was still demeaning as a woman to be viewed as an object of lust. As a child and young adult, I’m not sure I entirely grasped that idea, how the way one person perceives another can be harmful even absent any overt action. But I’m learning to perceive our deep interconnectedness better and how it damages us all when any of us are seen, much less treated, as objects instead of human beings.

    With that said, the particular outrage at this show confuses me. After all, the Playboy Club of the time period of this show wasn’t really any different than a modern-day Hooters , Twin Peaks, or similar sort of venues. Actually, the bunny uniform is really less revealing than those more modern versions. Now that’s an illustration, perhaps, of the way in which Playboy helped shift our culture and it makes an interesting study. But as far as I can tell, this show isn’t out of line with our mainstream, dominant culture. If anything, it’s probably a little old-fashioned by our standards. I don’t find the premise even vaguely interesting and won’t be watching it. But if I were going to be outraged over this show, to be consistent, I would have to live in a perpetual state of outrage at everything around me. And I just don’t have the energy for that.

    • http://felicemifa.wordpress.com felicemifa

      “But as far as I can tell, this show isn’t out of line with our mainstream, dominant culture. If anything, it’s probably a little old-fashioned by our standards. I don’t find the premise even vaguely interesting and won’t be watching it. But if I were going to be outraged over this show, to be consistent, I would have to live in a perpetual state of outrage at everything around me. And I just don’t have the energy for that.”

      You’re right on the money, Scott. And I share with you the outrage fatigue. I wonder if this is the corporate media’s way of testing us, of saying “we know we ‘ve been pornifying your culture for decades now, and we’re going to do this to see if you’ve noticed”.